inarticulate sparkle.

Dear Daniel, I’m not redacting your name anymore. Not this time. This was always about you.

My apartment was already packed.

Not metaphorically. Not in the cute, emotionally prepared, “new chapter” kind of way. I mean there were boxes. Tape. Plans. A future stacked in corners, waiting to be carried somewhere else. A change of address form that I hastily filled out in purple pen.

And then, just like that, there was no “somewhere else.”

There was only me, standing in the middle of all the things I thought I was bringing with me, realizing I had no idea where I was supposed to go.

That’s the part people don’t warn you about when someone breaks your heart. They talk about missing the person. They talk about deleting the pictures, crying in the shower, hearing a song and losing your mind in the bread aisle.

They don’t talk about the logistics. They don’t talk about the apartment. They don’t talk about how hope has an address until suddenly it doesn’t.

I did not see this coming at all. I would have spent the rest of my life doing everything in my power to make you happy. I’d have made you 4 pounds of chicken cutlets every Sunday. I would have make steak and eggs for dinner after you fasted all day at work.

I know you were scared, or at least you told me you were. So was I. I was scared of exactly what you just did to me. You promised me that you weren’t going to hurt me… but thinking back, I remember what you said more clearly. “I do not intend to hurt you.”

You didn’t intend to, but that was your warning. You might. And you didn’t just hurt me, you left me alone, holding on to the version of myself that you helped me pack.

I had so much hope for the future, which is rare for me these days. Nobody tells you how stupid hope feels when it’s still warm. How yesterday’s certainty can sit in your chest like evidence you’re not allowed to submit anymore.

I don’t know what to do with myself, Daniel. Do I unpack? Do I renew the lease? Do I find somewhere else? Do I leave the boxes taped because part of me still thinks the plan might come back? Do I pretend I’m making adult decisions when really I’m just trying not to throw up every time I look at the living room?

The cruelest part is that I’m not only missing you. I’m detoxing from the hope you handed me. The future you described. The version of myself I became around you. The belief that maybe this time, I wouldn’t have to beg to be chosen.

I wrote and deleted the last message so many times it stopped looking like words. I wanted to be angry. I wanted to be graceful. I wanted to be unforgettable. Mostly, I wanted to be treated like someone who mattered. I don’t even know if you got it, I could have been blocked before then. I might never know, but deep down I hope that if you did read it, you’d at least have said you were sorry.

If you were wondering, today I only cried twice. That is not healing, not really. It is not peace. It is not some triumphant little montage where I light a candle, unpack a box, and become a woman who drinks lemon water and learns boundaries.

It is just twice.

But after days of crying so hard I forgot what my face looked like when it was still, twice feels like a hand on the edge of the pool. Twice feels like one breath above water.

My apartment is still packed. My future is not.

And maybe that is where I start. You rang my Bell, Daniel… and for a minute there I thought it meant someone was finally coming home.